Posts Tagged ‘do-not call list’

Listing your name on Canada’s new do-not-call registry could actually increase the likelihood that you will be targeted by unscrupulous telemarketers.

The Consumers’ Association of Canada says it has been inundated with complaints from people who have been called by scam artists after placing their telephone numbers on the registry, which went into effect last September.

The do-not-call list was created to prevent telemarketers from contacting people who do not want to be pestered with uninvited sales pitches. For companies to find out who they are not permitted to call, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission sells the list online for a fee.

“You can buy any list you want of people who subscribe to the do-not-call registry online. The whole of Toronto costs you 50 bucks for 600,000 names,” Bruce Cran, president of the CAC, said in a telephone interview yesterday.

“That’s just perfect for any telemarketer, because these are good names which they would otherwise have to pay money for to verify. In addition to that, there’s no index list of cell phone numbers that you can get. However, people were encouraged to put their cell phone numbers on there as well.”

It is hard to comprehend just how stupid the people who set this up must be.

I put my name on this list thinking (obviously not clearly enough) that our highly paid bureaucrats would have some logical plan in place to distribute the list of “no call” names to existing and legitimate call centres. But no – they put it out there on the internet, with no controls, for one and all to purchase.

Did it never occur to these idiots that someone other than the intended call centers – maybe even offshore operations that they have no control over – might find these lists of value to whatever schemes they might have in mind?

So much for the protection of personal privacy.

Just another lesson in life. Wherever and whenever, volunteer as little as possible about yourself to the fricking government.

I am enraged, disgusted and unfortunately resigned to the fact that some of my personal tax dollars are going to pay the salaries of these incompetents.